


Satan And His Wrangler

by ElenaCee



Series: Devil's Trap [19]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: "Lucifer Around the World", Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Devil Reveal (sort of), Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Lucifer in New York, Original Character(s), Supernatural Elements, Wings, shower fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenaCee/pseuds/ElenaCee
Summary: NYPD wants the Devil, so the LAPD's premier crime-fighting duo takes a trip to New York.Also a part of the "Lucifer Around the World" ongoing fic fest.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Expect canon-typical violence (at least typical for my canon divergence canon, lol) and the requisite hurt/comfort in later chapters.
> 
> As always, thanks so much for all the comments and kudos on the preceding parts of this series. I wouldn't still be writing this if it weren't for you guys. <3

Chloe’s deep, delighted moan echoed through the bullpen, causing heads to turn and mouths to smile. A second later, though, her moan morphed into a higher-pitched sound of pain.

“A-hah,” she could hear the Devil gloat into her ear from behind her, currently bent over her as she was seated at her desk. “Found it.”

He repeated the motion that had caused her to cry out, and Chloe hissed. “Ow.”

“Sorry, my love,” he said, immediately contrite.

She hissed again but shook her head. “It’s fine. I know it’s supposed to hurt a little.” At least, that’s what she’d heard. She’d never been one to indulge herself much, so the times she’d gotten a proper shiatsu back massage - or any massage at all - had been few and far between.

“Not if I’m doing it.” Lucifer kept his fingers on just that spot. There was no more of the pressure-pain she expected from that kind of massage, though; instead, a sense of warmth and peace enveloped her, and the persistent pain in her back and shoulders faded and disappeared.

She moaned again, in pure pleasure this time. _Let’s hear it for angelic grace,_ she thought, barely coherent.

“What the hell is going on here?” Dan’s voice intruded. “Get a room, you two.”

Lucifer removed his fingers but kept his hand on her back, warm and comforting. “For once, it’s not what it sounded like, Daniel,” his voice came from behind her. “Shall I do you next? I’m actually pretty good at this.” He paused, and added, “As at almost anything.”

Smiling at her Devil’s vanity, Chloe swiveled her head and moved her shoulders experimentally, but the pain remained gone. “So you are. Thank you.” She didn’t even need to look at him to know he was wearing one of his smug grins.

“Yeah, no,” Dan told Lucifer. “No time for pleasure, in any case. Lieutenant wants to see the two of you.”

“She need a back rub as well?” Lucifer said, grinning, only to be ignored by them both.

“NYPD is asking for you again,” Olivia said when they had taken their seats. “Specifically, they’re asking for, and I quote, ‘Satan and his wrangler’.”

Lucifer snorted, and Chloe couldn’t suppress a grin.

Olivia ignored the byplay. “It sounds serious.” She slid a folder across the table towards them. “Looks serious, too.”

Picking it up, Chloe opened the folder to find a series of images, each showing a different person; male, female, white, non-white, from all walks of life, all covered in blood, and all quite dead.

“Apparently, it’s always the same M.O. The vics are caught somewhere alone. There are no witnesses. No signs of robbery. They have no connections to each other that anyone could find so far, except for the exact same cause of death in each case.”

“So, a serial killer,” Chloe said, passing the photos along to Lucifer. “How many vics?”

“Eleven.”

Chloe grimaced. “Wow.”

“How _did_ these humans die?” Lucifer asked, peering at one of the photos.

“Stabbed through their hearts,” Olivia said. “The same weapon in each case; apparently some sort of short-bladed knife or dagger.”

Chloe stacked the photos back together. “I’m sorry, but horrible as this is, I don’t see why NYPD wouldn’t be able to handle this themselves. Why do they need us, exactly?”

Olivia gave her her best serious look. “Because three of these murders were committed in locked rooms with no sign of forced entry or exit, and the only explanation that seems to cover this is supernatural.”

“Have they heard of Houdini?” Lucifer put in, grinning.

Chloe threw him a look, then turned to Olivia. “Good point, actually. How do they come to the conclusion that murders in locked rooms equal supernatural activity? There are tons of ways to get out of those, from secret passages to windows to spare keys. Or maybe the vics weren’t even killed inside these rooms and only put there after their deaths.”

“One of the ‘locked rooms’ in question,” Olivia said, “was a bank vault. The victim was alone - and alive - when the vault was sealed behind her. Security footage confirms this. When the vault was opened again an hour later, after the bank clerk failed to contact his customer over the intercom, she was dead.”

Chloe nodded, convinced. “Maybe should’ve led with that, Lieutenant.”

Olivia smiled and turned to Lucifer. “I assume that high-security vaults would pose no obstacle to you or other supernatural beings such as you, Mr. Morningstar?”

“Whoever can traverse planes of existence is not impeded by the physical barriers in one of these planes, yes,” Lucifer said. “That includes most Celestial beings. It could be an Archangel, or another bloody Nephilim, or a rogue soldier of Dad’s army of lesser angels, or a high-level demon. That’s just mentioning those who would be aware of Earth and might have an incentive to come here and murder its inhabitants in the first place.”

Olivia blinked at him.

“The multiverse is vast, darling, teeming with life of all manner of description in nearly every corner,” Lucifer said. “Not even I have seen everything, and I was there when my Father told me to let there be light.”

Olivia blinked again. “Right.” She shook herself delicately.

Chloe could empathize. For all Lucifer’s professed dorkiness, now that they didn’t have their former belief that he was just a weirdo to protect them, it was remarks like those that reminded them how ancient and inhuman he truly was.

“And if this killer is either of Hell or of Heaven, I promise I’ll take care of it,” Lucifer added, oblivious to the effect his words had created. “You’re all under my protection, after all.”

Chloe watched Olivia breathe deeply and force a smile. “Thank you.”

“And I promise to wrangle him,” Chloe added, because she found herself unable to leave such a cue alone.

“Oooh,” Lucifer purred. “Looking forward to _that_ , Detective.”

 

* * *

 

Lucifer had left to make good on his promise to ask his brother Sachiel to become involved in human affairs, and to find out  whether Sach would consider going to New York to help deal with this apparently supernatural sitch. Alone for a change, Chloe sighed, looking around her apartment for things that needed to be done while she waited.

There was always cleaning up the most recent mess Maze had made; a sisyphean task if ever there was one. Some days, especially when Chloe had been away from home for a while, she was wary of opening the dishwasher for fear of what she’d find in there. Honestly, sometimes it was like she had two children to clean up after instead of one.

Three, if she counted Lucifer.

Well, no, that wasn’t fair. The Devil actually had some amazingly firm, if a little anal, views of how a household should be run, and other than Maze, he was a wonderful cook.

She smiled, remembering their latest grocery shopping tour, and how she had, for the first time, seen the insides of some high-class stores while Lucifer hunted for whatever rare produce he considered indispensable for the meal he’d planned that day.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar sound of wings displacing air behind her. “That was fast,” she said, turning around.

The winged visitor wasn’t Lucifer, though. “Fear not,” Michael intoned, folding his wings away and looking at her out of his dark eyes with that serene placidity that seemed to characterize angels, if the three Chloe had met were any indication.

Chloe closed her mouth and took a breath. “I ‘fear not’,” she said pointedly, trying not to feel frazzled and flat-footed. “You startled me, that’s all. Have _any_ of you guys heard about doorbells and doors and the possibility of knocking on them?”

Michael gave her a confused look that she found very familiar, especially on a face that was so similar to Lucifer’s. “This way saves time,” he said simply.

She couldn’t really contest that. She also knew from experience that explaining the concept of privacy to Celestials was an uphill battle doomed to fail. “Right. So, what do you want?” she said, deciding to do some time saving of her own.

“There is a problem in the northeast of this continent,” he said, equally shortly and apparently finding no offense, “in the city you call New York.”

Chloe nodded. “Yeah, we know.”

“It is entirely due to my little brother leaving his post and staying away for so long, so, pray inform him that I expect him to clean up his mess before our Father gets angry.”

She nodded again. “Already on it.”

Michael’s face assumed an expression of surprise. “He is?”

“We are,” she corrected him. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he be? Earth is his home now. Of course he’ll protect it.”

He blinked. “He’s never been one to take responsibility for anything, let alone for his actions.” Chloe could hear the brotherly resentment in his voice.

She smiled. “Yeah, well, you haven’t seen him in a long while. Maybe it’s time for you to get to know your brother all over again.”

“Apparently so.” He returned her smile, looking impressed. “I have no doubt that you have been instrumental in his change. Father truly did some of His finest work when He created you.”

Before Chloe could come up with a reply to that, he inclined his head.

“Give my little brother my regards, Chloe Decker.” A flap of wings, and he was gone.

 

* * *

 

“Sachiel won’t do it,” Lucifer reported a little later, taking a seat at the counter in the kitchen area. “Apparently, he’s busy rehabilitating his spawn.” His tone of voice made it clear how much of a lost cause he considered that to be.

“That’s… actually a great thing to do,” Chloe said.

“I think it’s a stupid thing to do,” Lucifer said, one hand stroking down his chest to where the nephilim Ephraim had speared him with his supernaturally imbued sword. “The bugger will backstab him first chance he gets. He first needs a crash course on the basic concepts of good and evil - emphasis on crash -, and his soul may be so blackened by now that he’s incapable of comprehending even that much.” He sighed. “I’d put him in a cage to teach him manners for a few decades first, if not kill him outright.”

That shut Chloe up for a bit as she mulled it over. Did the Celestials have a legal system that included the death penalty? Did they have courts, and lawyers? Or was everything done according to the will and on the sayso of God, with Him being judge and jury?

“But he’s Sach’s spawn, so,” Lucifer went on, giving her a bright smile. “If he wants to try his hand at parenting, who am I to gainsay him?”

Shelving her questions, she returned his smile. “So, we’re going?”

The look in his eyes softened. “Yes, my miracle, we’re going to New York.” He tilted his head to one side. “It’s been a while. Have you ever been to the Big Apple?”

“Yes, actually. My mom took me a few times.”

“Splendid. You can show me around, then. Last time I was there, they still had horses and carriages.”

Once more, Chloe experienced a mental whiteout. This man, this _being_ sitting at her ordinary kitchen island counter looking at her out of sparkling dark eyes and appearing no older than thirty-five, was actually billions of years old.

As if to protect her from this awareness, her mind threw up a recent memory. “Oh,” she said quickly, “I’m supposed to give you your brother Michael’s regards.”

Lucifer’s mien darkened, then his brows came down suspiciously. “His regards? Really? Not his everlasting resentment or wish for me to contract a terminal case of diarrhea?”

“Ew,” Chloe said automatically. “And, no. Just his regards. I think he’s proud of you for going to New York without him prompting you.”

Now, Lucifer’s face assumed an expression of blatant disbelief. “We _are_ talking about my brother, right? Michael the Archangel, chief of the Heavenly Host of Arses? That Michael?”

She had to bite back a smile at this reminder that God’s Angels had the emotional maturity of ten-year-olds and the Devil that of a five-year-old. “Yep. That Michael.”

“He was about to _prompt_ me?” Lucifer went on. “Last time he did that, he prompted me right out of the Silver City and straight into Hell, so forgive me if I don’t take this message at face value.”

“Lucifer,” Chloe said, “that was literally ages ago. He’s trying to start over, sort of. I think.” She reached out to take his hands in hers. “Maybe you should try to do the same.”

He looked down at their joined hands, his warm thumb softly stroking her cooler fingers. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I didn’t smite him when he turned up for dinner, so….”

“Right,” she said, smiling. “It’s a start.”

“Hold on,” he said, “why did he think he’d be justified prompting _me_ , anyway? This murderer running rampant could be of Heaven.”

Chloe shrugged. “He seems to think it’s happening because you abdicated your throne.” She thought it best not to mention that Michael had worded it a little differently.

“Bloody typical. Of _course_ it can’t be _their_ fault. Of _course_ I’m always the one to blame. Pricks, the lot of them.”

She returned the pressure of his fingers to calm him before his rant could gather any more steam. “Let’s go and find out whose fault it is, then, my Lord.”


	2. Chapter 2

The flight to JFK airport was something else.

Chloe was surprised to learn that Lucifer had never been aboard a plane before. Not so surprisingly, though, he promptly stated how much he was looking forward to becoming a member of the Mile High Club, and his pouts when Chloe informed him that he could forget about that were heartbreaking and prolonged. He only started to cheer up again when he noticed that the flight attendants in the Business Class cabin - their assigned Economy tickets being far beneath the former King of Hell, which he had remedied at check-in - kept switching out with those in Economy, as if every member of the cabin crew wanted to be his personal attendant for a while, at least long enough to give him their phone numbers.

Chloe let him have his fun, secure in her status as the sole keeper of the Devil’s heart.

She, of course, had traveled by plane before, though never Business Class. She tried not to enjoy the unexpected luxury of enough space to stretch out or the free food and drinks too much, even though Lucifer kept assuring her that she’d never travel any other way again as long as he had anything to say about it.

During take-off, Lucifer stared out the window, looking tense, and Chloe, thinking he was nervous, felt moved to reassure him.

But Lucifer gave her an easy smile. “It makes sense, you know,” he said, as if continuing a conversation they had had before. “If you can’t flap your wings, you have to run really fast to get airborne. I just didn’t expect it’d be  _ that _ fast.” He peered out the window again. “I have to try that sometime.”

Which distracted Chloe for a few minutes, imagining him running as fast as he could, his wings spread out rigidly to his sides, like a miniature airplane.

It didn’t take long for Lucifer to learn the names of all their fellow first class travellers (and their deepest desires). Again, Chloe left him to his flirting. Some things were so deeply ingrained that trying to keep him from doing them would only frustrate them both.

Next, bored, he charmed his way inside the flight deck and even onto the co-pilot’s seat, all the while keeping up a remarkably on-topic conversation with the captain about the intricacies of flying.

“You a pilot?” the captain finally asked.

“Not as such, no,” Lucifer replied, grinning like a loon. “You might say I take a more informal approach to it. You see, I can actually --”

Which was when Chloe, fearing a freakout in the flight deck and an unscheduled forced landing, intervened by loudly declaring her need for a nap and the obligatory proximity of her partner during said nap.

Devil-wrangling, indeed.

To her surprise, even though she should be used to it by now, Lucifer deferred to her immediately. She got her nap and the hellish warmth of her partner snuggled up next to her and actually staying in his seat, holding her, one arm wrapped around her and his lips buried in her hair, the whole time she slept.

When she woke up, she found him still there, now folded in on himself inelegantly, deeply asleep. She gently brought his head in a more comfortable position on her shoulder, and he spent the rest of the flight like that, his tall frame half sprawling, half curled up beside her, breathing hot air against her neck in deep, regular not-quite-snores. She held him, now and then stroking his face just to hear him hum softly in response.

**_do me a favor & draw smth on him, _ ** Dan texted back when she had sent him a photo of the peacefully sleeping Devil.  **_hed do the same 2 me_ **

Dan was probably right, she reflected, but  _ someone  _ had to be the adult.

A pit-stop at their assigned hotel was followed by Lucifer figuratively throwing up his hands in disgust and booking them a suite in a five-star hotel on Fifth Ave with muttered remarks about the Devil’s Consort not being treated like a peasant while in his presence. Again, Chloe let him, knowing that there was nothing she could say about paid and unpaid expenses that would make him change his mind. She was getting to enjoy all the advantages of his unlimited funds, and that was that.

They finally found themselves in the Homicide Department of the NYPD precinct, in a small conference room opposite Lieutenant Aaron Mitchell and Detectives Sarah Venucci and Kim Taylor.

All three of them were looking both expectant and skeptical. Chloe couldn’t blame them. They had no idea what they’d bargained for. She’d been skeptical for the longest time herself, and these guys only knew them by their reputation. Whatever that was.

Lucifer, though, sighed. “Alright, let’s get this over with, then. Yes, I’m really the Devil. No, I’m not here - here on Earth and here in this building - to take anyone’s souls. I don’t take the souls of the living. That’s my sister’s job. I’m here because I like to punish evil, that’s all.”

The three skeptic’s expressions didn’t change. “That true?” Mitchell asked, turning to Chloe.

She felt her own sigh forcing to get out. “Everything he says is true, Lieutenant. Always.”

“Really?” Mitchell turned back to Lucifer. “Mind if we don’t take that at face value, despite the sterling testimonials?”

Lucifer raised his eyebrows. “You want proof?”

“Damn right we do.”

He sighed. “What is it with you humans and proof? Oh, very well. I suppose a burning bush wouldn’t do it, and the more infernal manifestations are out as well, so….” He got up from his chair, and vanished with a pop of displaced air.

Chloe leaned back in her seat, relieved. She had just decided that these three Homicide cops were probably able to handle the eyes, but this was so much better.

“Where’d he go?” Kim Taylor asked, looking at the floor where Lucifer had stood suspiciously, as if expecting to find a heretofore unnoticed trap door there.

Chloe shrugged. “To another plane of existence, I guess. Uh, another dimension.”

“This isn’t a trick?” the black-skinned cop wanted to know.

Chloe couldn’t help but smile. How often had she tried to figure out how his powers could be explained scientifically, back when she hadn’t known? “No, no trick.”

The door opened, and Lucifer walked in, carrying a manila folder. He put it on the table in front of Mitchell.

The lieutenant stared at it. “That was on my desk, two floors up, clear on the other side of the building.”

Lucifer sat down, grinning. “I had planned on getting the Detective a coffee, but then I would have had to bring coffees for everyone, so I decided that this might do.” He gave Chloe a gentle look. “Sorry, my love.”

She smiled. “I appreciate the thought, Lucifer.”

Meanwhile, the NYPD detectives were in turn looking at the folder and at Lucifer, their skeptic expressions replaced by amazement.

“You’re really the Devil,” Sarah Venucci finally said faintly, her Italian accent a little more audible. “Mamma mia.”

Lucifer nodded, then turned back to Chloe. “They’re much easier to convince than you were, you know. I don’t know how often I pulled something like this on you, and yet… so stubborn.”

“Yeah, well,” Chloe said. “‘That which must not, cannot be’, or something, right?”

“Oooh. All that tutoring definitely paid off.” He gave her one of his flirtatious smiles that made Chloe regret, for just a second, that she was on duty. Sort of.

Their byplay had given the NYPD cops time to get over the first shock, though.

“Okay,” Mitchell resumed, “you’re really the Devil. And you’re not here for our souls. Then why  _ are  _ you here?”

Lucifer grinned at him. “I’m here because it looks like you are in dire need of our help.” He saw Mitchells expression and added, “And because I was bored in Hell.”

“There is a Hell.” He shook his head. “Oh, man.”

Lucifer’s grin widened. “Oh yes. Trust me, you don’t want to end up there.”

Chloe sighed again, but she supposed she needed to give these guys space to process all this. It wasn’t their fault that she’d had such a long headstart that, by now, she couldn’t imagine her life without the Devil in it. Also, she remembered what she’d been like when she’d finally been forced to face facts.

“Oh, come on,” Lucifer said, clearly not feeling nearly as magnanimous. “I’ve been saying all that to news crews nonstop for what feels like the past three months. I realize that this is the other end of the nation, but surely this isn’t the first time you heard me say this.”

The two detectives look at each other, and Kim Taylor shrugged. “Some guy in LA claiming he’s the Devil?” the black woman said. “It’s LA. Weird shit happens there all the time.”

“And yet,” Chloe put in, “you asked for our help, specifically.”

Now Sarah Venucci was the one shrugging. “We’re stuck,” she said, her accent back under control. “We have no evidence, no idea where to start looking. People keep getting killed. Lieutenant said it’s time to grasp at straws.”

“For the record, I didn’t put it like that,” Mitchell interjected, “but yeah. We need outside input, and the reports about the two of you sounded like you’re a valid option. Devil or no.”

“We’d’ve been happy just getting you, Mr. Morningstar, but apparently, you come with a wrangler.” Sarah gave Chloe a look. “No offense.”

Chloe waved that away. She was the Devil’s Consort, and these innocent mortals were hardly equipped to grasp the value of that fact. She couldn’t fault them for operating within their limits. Besides, they weren’t wrong - keeping Lucifer in check was one of the reasons why she’d come with, after all.

“She’s much more than my ‘wrangler’,” Lucifer said, offended on her behalf. “She’s -”

“Lucifer,” Chloe said softly, trying to impart to him with her look that it didn’t matter. She knew her value, and she’d pick her own battles if and when it did.

He gave her a smile and a brief nod, deferring to her wishes. Again.

“I see,” Mitchell said into the ensuing silence, clearly catching the undercurrents and interpreting them correctly.

“Right,” Lucifer said brightly, clapping his hands together. “Then let’s get to it, shall we? How about we go look at one of the victims -”

“.... and at the most recent crime scene, if possible,” Chloe added.

“Fine,” Mitchell said, “but let me remind you that this is our case. You don’t have jurisdiction here.”

Lucifer opened his mouth and drew a breath, no doubt to challenge the very foundation of this statement, and Chloe put a hand on his arm. “Noted. We’re just here to consult.”

The Devil let the breath out again in an explosive sigh. “Right. Of course.”

 

* * *

 

They had looked at the most recent body. They had looked at the most recent crime scene. They had looked at all the photos that had been taken by CSI. They had even read the reports (well, Chloe had).

Darkness was falling. Chloe, who knew Lucifer better by now than his own siblings did, gathered from his expression that the former King of Hell was drawing as much of a blank regarding the evidence as the mortal detectives had. “Nothing?” she asked him by way of making sure.

“Not much, in any case,” he grumbled. “The murder weapon is most probably a demon blade. I’ve seen wounds like these before, many times.” He pointed at one of the photos.

“That’s something,” she said.

His scowl didn’t ease. “I can’t be completely sure, but it’s been too long by now, and whoever did these tests didn’t know what they were looking for.” He held up what looked like a chromatogram.

The squiggly lines with their irregular peaks and valleys didn’t mean anything to Chloe, and she doubted they meant more to Lucifer. “What should they have been looking for then?” she prompted him.

“Difficult to explain. It’s a certain smell that lingers in the wound. I assume that this doodad would have been able to detect whatever it is that causes the smell, but it’s fleeting. Usually dissipates within an hour or so.”

“Uhm,” Sarah Venucci butted it, “sorry for eavesdropping, but there should be tissue samples still in frozen storage from when this was taken. It’s SOP.” She nodded at the chromatogram. “Maybe whatever you’re talking about is still in those frozen samples.”

 

* * *

 

It was.

Lucifer only needed to put his aquiline nose close to one of the defrosting samples briefly to scrunch up his face and nod. “Stink of Hell. No doubt about it. Our killer wields a hell-forged blade. Probably a demon. Definitely a denizen of the Infernal plane.”

“Right,” Sarah said, while Kim looked on in silence. “Where do we start looking for them, then?”

“You don’t,” Lucifer said, still staring at the tissue sample. “This is likely a high-level demon or other supernatural being who can traverse dimensions, or planes of existence, and if so, it probably resides in Hell and only comes up to do its nefarious deeds. You will only find it here, on Earth, when it commits its next murder.”

Kim scowled. “That’s enormously unhelpful. There’s nothing we can do to find...  _ it... _ first?”

“Unless you can go to Hell, afraid not,” Lucifer said with  _ that _ smile. “Which _ you _ can’t, obviously.” His smile dissolved. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to call in a few favors.” He put the sample on the table with a soft clatter and turned to take Chloe’s hands. “I’ll try to find out the identity of our murderous hellspawn so I can find it in its lair, but that may take a while, even considering how slowly time moves here on Earth.”

“You’re going to Hell?” Chloe asked, already knowing the answer. “Will you be safe?”

He bit his lip. “I’ll be careful.”

So, not safe. Chloe felt a stab of worry. He hadn’t told her much about his life there, but from what little he’d said, she gathered that Hell was a place of chaos and constant backstabbing. Then there were the doors, and his guilt over killing his brother Uriel. Former Lord of Hell or no, he wasn’t immune to its dangers anymore. He might become trapped there now, just like any other guilty soul.

“In case the demon comes back up,” Lucifer went on, addressing the NYPD cops as well, “do not engage it while I’m not around. Most supernatural beings are at least five times stronger than humans and much faster, and this one can probably teleport. You’d be dead before you can draw your weapons, not that they’d do much good.”

Chloe nodded. She’d seen Maze fight.

“If it attacks you,” Lucifer said, now looking only at Chloe, “you won’t have time for heroics. Just pray to me. Immediately. Promise me that, Chloe.” He looked down at the pendant around her neck that contained one of his feathers. “I’ll be able to find you, but so may the demon. We still don’t know what it’s after, why it is killing humans. Any of you may be among its targets.” He increased the pressure of his hands on hers.  _ “Promise me.” _

“I promise,” she said, returning the pressure, feeling the heat of his flesh surround hers. “Please, Lucifer, be careful.”

He let go, nodding. “I will.” Then he looked at the others, and his face lit up in a wide grin. “Oh, for Dad’s sake, don’t look so glum. This will be fun!”

With that, he vanished from this dimension, and Chloe fervently hoped that he was right about the fun thing.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first minute after Lucifer had vanished, Chloe actually held her breath.

She knew that time was relative, but she didn’t know the precise scale of that relativity, or rather, the sliding scale of that relativity. One minute on Earth was like hours in Hell, except when it was like days, weeks, or even years. Lucifer had tried to explain it once, but she had found she couldn’t grasp the concept of “temporal density” enough to apply it to the various circles of Heaven and Hell. The fact that Lucifer used comparisons like “layers in a cocktail sliding over your tongue” hadn’t helped.

However long it was in this case, one Earth minute clearly wasn’t enough for Lucifer to do whatever he needed to do down in Hell. She released her breath.

“How long is this gonna take?” Kim wanted to know, echoing her thoughts.

“Literally no idea,” Chloe admitted, distracted by another worry. As if this whole timeline thing weren’t complicated enough, there was always the possibility that Lucifer would become trapped in his own Hell. Which she was  _ not _ going to be thinking about anymore.

She regarded the two detectives. “Uh, you might as well go home. It’s late.” A thought came to her. “Well. Unless…. “

Sarah, apparently, had followed her train of thought, since she was nodding. “Your partner said we’re all targets, right? I guess we’d better stick together for now. Watch each other’s backs. While, uh, while we wait for the literal Devil to get back from literal Hell with the intel, I mean.  _ Man.” _

“Yeah, crazy,” Kim added, making herself comfortable on her chair. “Uh, quick briefing on what we’re up against?” 

Chloe was impressed with how well these two were handling all that. New York clearly was a breeding ground for a tough kind of cops. What’s more, they were right. As long as nobody knew why the demon was killing all these seemingly random humans, everyone was a target.

“Well,” she said, “if it’s a demon, it’ll probably look human. They can disguise their true appearance.”

“So, no horns or glowy eyes,” Kim clarified.

Chloe smiled, remembering a dream she’d once had. “Nope, no horns. They can’t be distinguished from humans, visually that is.” She gave them a tight-lipped smile. “How well do you two know each other?”

There was a pause during which the two detectives seemed to try to decide whether that had been a joke, and Chloe realized that she should leave that kind of remark to the expert.

“If one of us is a demon, it’s her,” Sarah said then, jabbing a thumb at Kim.

Kim nodded. “A donut-demon,” she said, deadpan, causing her partner to smile.

Chloe, too, smiled. She was beginning to like these two. “Anyway, demons are resilient, as in, not easily hurt. They can be hurt, though. Like Lucifer said, they’re really strong.” Some things she’d seen Maze do came to her mind. “The one I know favors a two-weapon fighting style -”

“Hang on,” Sarah interrupted. “You  _ know _ a demon? As in, have known one for a while?”

Chloe nodded. “Hmhm. One of my best friends. My daughter loves her.”

“But -”

This was all so very familiar. “They’re not evil, you know. Just really, really angry. Lucifer says it’s their default state. Comes with being created in Hell, I suppose.”

Kim frowned. “So, what, you’re saying that neither the Devil nor demons are evil?”

“Basically, yeah.” There was a familiar sound of air displacing behind Chloe.

“Well, fuck me with a spoon,” Kim said under her breath.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Lucifer’s voice came. “That is much less fun than it sounds like, trust me.”

Chloe turned, saw him, and gasped.

He looked like he’d been in a fight, slept under a bridge, weathered a sand storm and a fire, and got into another fight or two. His dress suit was ruined; covered in ash and torn in several places. His equally torn and dirty shirt looked scorched in some places. His hair was in complete disarray and matted with ash and blood at one temple. His knuckles were blackened and caked in blood, his nails dirty, and his face looked like he had wiped it with a dirty rag more than once. A pervading smell of brimstone clung to him.

Despite his bedraggled appearance, he was grinning like he’d had the time of his life. “You’re all still here,” he said. “Good.”

“Lucifer,” Chloe said, “you look terrible. How long were you down there for?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair to smooth it down and accomplishing precisely nothing. “I’m not sure, maybe a month or two. It’s a vast place. Lots of inhabitants. Lots of agendas. Lots of lies and half truths to sift through.” He looked at his hand and at the dirt he had brushed out of his hair. “Ugh. I need a shower. A long one.”

“What the hell happened to you?” Kim asked.

Lucifer grinned. “Exactly.”

“What?”

“Hell happened.” He brushed ineffectually at a tear in his suit jacket, giving up with a sigh. “My poor Armani. Oh well. They’re still fighting over my throne, which I left a while ago; centuries by now, in fact. I know that these things take ages to settle, but this is ridiculous. Not to mention all the opportunists thinking they can get one up on me. Needed to resort to violence more than once.”

“Are you okay?” Chloe needed to ask. He didn’t look okay, but he had been away from her, so he’d have been immortal all the time he was down in Hell, and there was no telling how much of the blood that currently adorned him was his.

He gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine; I heal fast. Also, I was successful. The guy we’re looking for is called Brandor. Old acquaintance of mine. He’s up here now, by all accounts. I didn’t find him when I checked his lair, so that seems to check out.”

_ Right. Focus on the case, Decker.  _ “Why is he up here? Why is he killing all these people?”

“Revenge.” He pulled up a chair and sat down with another sigh.

Chloe recognized the signs of exhaustion he was trying to conceal, but, fully aware of her Devil’s pride, she didn’t say anything. If he wanted to downplay his condition, so would she.

He looked up at her, doing the thing where he looked like a little boy and still made her want to kiss him rather than ruffle his hair. The effect was exacerbated by his current disheveled state that made him appear all dark eyes and tousled locks. “He’s on a mission to kill all descendants of a man who apparently did him wrong more than two thousand years ago. That man’s soul is down in Hell and only recently confessed to that wrong, which is why Brandor only started his killing spree about a year ago. Apparently, he’s finished in Europe and is now expanding to the States, starting here.”

Sarah snorted. “Killing all descendants of one person? After two thousand years? Wow. Must be some grudge.”

“Would have been even longer ago, considering how differently time passes in Hell,” Chloe added.

Lucifer shrugged. “He’s a demon. Holding grudges is in their job description. A few millennia is nothing to them.”

“Wait, all the vics are related?” Chloe asked. “But they’re from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds.”

Lucifer rubbed at his temple, dislodging dried blood. “Go back in time far enough, and you’ll see that all humans are descendants of a single woman. Go back even further to see that all living creatures on this planet go back to a single, primordial spark of life. And in cosmic terms, all matter, every planet and all life on each of them, including this handsome devil, was made by my Father.” He grinned. “We’re all one big, not-so-happy family.”

“Right,” Kim said after a minute of digesting all this. “I don’t see how this is helping us, though. We still don’t know the perp’s whereabouts, or where he’ll strike next.”

“Not necessarily,” Chloe said slowly. She had an idea, but she was sure that Lucifer wouldn’t like it one bit.

“Detective?” the Devil in question said expectantly. He clearly recognized her tone.

She looked at him, again noting the signs of his exhaustion. Maybe she should wait until after he’d rested to spring her plan on him. Then again, he wouldn’t like it any better then, either, and human lives might be lost in the meantime.

“You’ve got an idea brewing,” he went on, a proud smile beginning to light up his face. “I can tell. What is it?”

She sighed and decided to go for broke. “Well, we know that this Brandor is on Earth now, right? And you said that he might find me as long as I’m wearing your feather.” She saw his expression darken. Barrelling ahead, she added, “We set a trap. I’m the bait. You swoop in to smite him before he harms me. Done.”

His expression turned positively forbidding. “No.”

“It might work, and there’s no other -”

_ Sepulchral _ was the word she’d use for how his face was looking like now. “No.  _ No. _ Absolutely not.”

“Lucifer.”

“I am  _ not _ risking harm coming to you.”

She turned on her own version of the puppy-dog eyes. “Your brother said I no longer have an expiration date. There are no other options that I can see. Humans are dying. I say it’s worth the risk.”

Lucifer opened his mouth and closed it again, looking frustrated.

The two NYPD cops, having followed that bit of back-and-forth in silence, were nodding. “Makes sense,” Sarah said, while Kim muttered something about danger being part of the job.

Lucifer glared at them, but apparently, he realized that he was out-argued and outnumbered. “I do not like this at all,” he stated. “Nay, I hate the very idea with every fiber of my being.” He took Chloe’s hand. “But far be it from me to curtail your free will, my love. If this is really your desire, then we’ll do it.”

 

* * *

 

Lucifer had insisted that, Brandor loose on Earth or no, his first order of business was taking a shower, and, after getting another whiff of him, Chloe had agreed. Brimstone and dried blood did not an attractive combination make. In fact, she would have felt better if her battered Devil got in a little time for resting and recovering from his ordeal while they were at their hotel, but Lucifer had assured her that he was fine, and she knew that he didn’t lie.

He’d shed his shredded clothes as soon as he had entered their hotel suite, first presenting her his unnecessarily attractive naked body - a little bruised here and there but devoid of any serious injuries like he’d said, much to her relief - and then unfurling his rather bedraggled-looking wings.

“Ugh,” Chloe said as yet another hellish smell explosion flooded the suite when his feathers emerged.

“What?” he said, looking at her over his shoulder and shaking out one wing in a futile attempt to align the coverts, which didn’t improve matters.

She waved a hand, trying not to breathe. “Go. Into the shower. Now. Use plenty of shampoo. All of it, in fact.”

He blinked at her pleadingly. “Do my back?”

As if she could refuse. “I will, as soon as I’ve burned these,” she assured him, nodding at the trail of clothes he had left behind. “And aired out this princely abode.”

Fortunately, there was enough room in the shower stall for the two of them even with Lucifer’s wings out. They were only about half as voluminous now, tucked in as close as they could go and the feathers all dripping wet.

Standing behind him, running her hands through the sudsy things and watching the water that drained away become cleaner by the minute, Chloe tried not to get carried away, but, well. She loved this. Loved doing this for him, loved hearing the noises he made as she groomed him, loved the way he became practically boneless with pleasure at her touches while the hot water poured over them like a warm, wet hug.

It had been more than a month for him, she remembered, more than a month full of struggle, of watching his back, possibly fighting for his life. More importantly, it had been more than a month devoid of any affection.

Time to remedy that. She transferred her touches from his wings to his head and face, trying to remind him that he had left Hell behind for good, and that his place was with her now. He made that humming sound that told Chloe that he was receiving her message, and Chloe found she liked the direction this was going.

Suddenly, Lucifer straightened and turned, his arms going around her and his wings as well, enfolding her in both sets of limbs. “I am afraid,” his soft confession came as he rested his forehead against hers. “You’re a miracle, but Brandor wields a demon blade. There’s a high probability that it could destroy you, too.”

“Lucifer,” she began, not knowing what to say.

He held her tighter. “I could not face that. Losing you. It’s anathema to me. I… I don’t know what I’d do.”

She returned his hug. “I know. I can’t lose you, either.”

For a moment, he nearly crushed her with how tightly he was holding her against him, letting her feel a fraction of his strength. “My love,” he forced out, close to choking.

The next second, he had gathered himself, and his hold around her eased once more. “It’s not too late to cancel this foolish plan.”

She got up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “You know we have to do this, Lucifer. We’ll both just have to be careful.”

She could feel him nod against her. “If Brandor harms you, no hole will be deep enough for him to crawl into and hide from me,” he growled.

“Don’t forget that he can harm you as well,” she cautioned him. “I’ll be careful, but please, promise me you will be, too.”

His lips felt hot against hers even with all that warm water pelting down on them. “I promise.”

She gave him her bravest smile. “Then let’s you and I go get this hellspawn.”


	4. Chapter 4

While team LA had taken their timeout, NYPD had apparently been busy.

“Now that we know what we’re looking for, we’ve identified four more potential victims on Manhattan Island alone that are related to the dead guys,” Kim said briskly over Chloe’s phone. “Several more in the environs. Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Newark PDs are involved as of right now, providing police protection to them and identifying more relatives.”

“That’s great,” Chloe said, buttoning up her blouse. “Getting somewhere.”

“So, uh. It’s getting late, or rather, early. Maybe you want to wait until tomorrow for whatever you’re up to?”

Chloe shook her head, then followed it up with, “Nah, we’re good. We’re still on LA time. Besides, the sooner we get this bastard, the better.”

Lucifer, back to being impeccably groomed and wearing what Chloe privately called his combat outfit - black jeans and a leather jacket -, nodded as he was doing up the laces of his shoes. “We should act now, while Brandor’s still up here. If we wait too long, he may descend back to Hell, and then only my Father knows when or where he may strike again.”

“Did you get that?” Chloe asked into her phone.

“Yeah, copy that,” Kim’s voice said. “So, what’s the plan, and how can we provide backup?”

Chloe bit back her smile. What had happened to ‘this is our case’? “Well, we know that the demon will only strike when the vic’s alone,” she said. “So, while hopefully all of the perp’s targets are under protection and therefore not interesting for him, I’m going to take a walk in Central Park.”

“That’ll be closed for the night soon,” Kim interjected. “At one am. In, uh, ten minutes.”

“That’s what we’re counting on. I’ll be all alone, the only person in a wide radius, an easy target for the demon.”

“I see. What makes you think you’ll be attacked, though? We couldn’t find any indication that you’re related to the vics.”

Chloe threw Lucifer a look. She’d had a gut feeling it was true because she was carrying his feather in her pendant, and Lucifer hadn’t disagreed, but that seemed a bit flimsy now.

The Devil took her phone from her to answer. “That’s easy,” he said, grinning. “Chloe Decker simply is irresistible, and don’t tell me you don’t agree.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lucifer.”

He gave her his “what?” look, still grinning. “No, seriously, she’s touched by Divinity. It’s like demon catnip. Plus, she’s wearing a piece of me. Trust me, Brandor will come after her like the me after a soul.”

Chloe snorted. Lucifer using devil sayings would never not be funny to her.

“Right,” Kim said, sounding bemused. “So, do you want us to keep one of the Central Park gates open for you, then?”

Lucifer, who still had Chloe’s phone, didn’t stop grinning. “The detective will avail herself of Morningstar Airways, so closed gates won’t be a problem.”

 

* * *

 

This time, the flight was brief and very fast; not for pleasure but for getting somewhere. One second, Chloe was in their hotel room, holding on to Lucifer who had his wings out, and the next, she was standing in Central Park, a little off East Drive.

It was dark. Fortunately, though, darkness was relative, and not just because they were in a big city. The sky was clear; the moon was out, almost full, casting a soft silvery light over everything. In addition, a lamp light illuminated the way every few yards. Chloe was relieved. No stumbling around in the dark. With any luck, she’d even see Brandor coming.

For the moment, Lucifer was adding his own glow to that from the heavenly body. While Chloe was still looking for a way to work that thought into a pun, he gave her an earnest look. “Please be careful. I’ll be nearby, but Brandor will need less than a second to get close to you.”

“I know,” she said, going up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss against his lips. “I’ll be on my guard. Besides, I have this.” She briefly flicked the demon blade Lucifer had given her out of her sleeve.

“It suits you,” he said earnestly, and the look in his dark eyes told her without words how much he loved and appreciated her. “Make it count.”

“I will.”

“Good luck, my love.” He gave her one of his intense looks that seemed to gaze straight into her soul, maybe committing her to memory.

She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. She hoped that this wasn’t good-bye. “Good luck, Lucifer.”

His wings unfolded, and then he was gone, leaving behind a gust of wind.

“Right,” she said for the benefit of the NYPD team on surveillance. “Time to get this show in the road.”

“Copy that,” came Kim’s voice over her earpiece. “We’re ready and waiting.”

Chloe started walking, the demon blade clutched in her right hand. The footpath she was following led her from East Drive to Central Park Lagoon. It was a beautiful, balmy night, and she would have enjoyed this outing far more if her nerves hadn’t made her start and look around frantically for attacks from another dimension at every small sound.

A few minutes later - she had just reached Gapstow Bridge -, the tension came to an abrupt end.

A dark shape materialized right in front of her.

In the split second before it reached her, Chloe felt torn between two conflicting impulses - go for her gun like had become ingrained in her, or use the knife in her hand. The brief hesitation cost her, because she barely had her hand holding the blade up and ready when the demon was already upon her.

“You!” the Brandor yelled, his own arm raised and the moonlight reflecting off the blade in his hand.

The next few seconds were a blur. The demon reached her, moving much too fast for any sort of coordinated thrust-and-parry. She made slashing motions without actually seeing if and where she connected; a sharp pain bloomed in her upper arm.

Then the glowing white of Lucifer’s wings replaced the dark of the demon.

She was free from enemy contact now and could see clearly, but things still kept happening fast; too fast to follow. She had a confused impression of a battle nearby while she felt her knees buckle and went down on her knees on the ground, pressing her hand onto her upper arm and feeling warm wetness between her fingers.

Meanwhile, their combat took the fighters further away from her and finally up into the air, still whipping about faster than Chloe’s human eyes could keep track. Someone or something screamed; there was a sudden blaze of fire in the air briefly illuminating everything in a wide radius. It its light, Chloe could clearly see Lucifer fall inelegantly out of the sky to land hard on the footpath, in a broken, feathery heap. A few more yards to the right, and he would have fallen straight into the lagoon.

Then the fire was gone, and so was Brandor, as if he had never existed.

Trembling with reaction, Chloe carefully pocketed the demon blade and grabbed the pendant on the necklace around her neck, trying to make her numb fingers hold and unscrew it. Meanwhile, her eyes found the motionless shape on the footpath. “Lucifer,” she forced out.

No response. From where she was kneeling, she could only see a mass of white and the black of his hair. He was silent; didn’t move in response to her call.

Despite the shock of fading adrenaline, panic took hold of her. Giving up on the pendant, she forced herself to her feet, staggering like a drunk to where the Devil had fallen.

Her earpiece crackled to life even as she dropped to her knees next to him. “Chloe, what’s going on?” Kim’s voice came. “We saw what looked like an explosion…?”

Oh right, their human backup. “We’re clear,” she said. “Demon’s gone. You can stand down. Uh, gimme a minute.” She put her hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and gently turned him onto his back as far as his sprawling wings would let her. “Lucifer?”

The moonlight shone full on his face; she could see that his eyes were closed and his mouth slack. Her questing hand - she couldn’t move her left arm by now - found warm wetness all along his left side, and now, from up close, she could see the pool of blood spreading underneath him.

When she touched his face, his eyes blinked open and focused after a moment. “Chloe,” his weak voice came, “are you alright?”

She nodded. “I’m fine.” Well, that was a lie. She was beginning to get dizzy, but she had his feather. She’d be fine.

He smiled. “I, uh….” He blinked, looking at her in confusion. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and his eyes closed.

Cold terror took hold of her. “Lucifer!” she pleaded, tapping his cheek. “Come on, stay with me!”

No response. The pool of blood underneath him kept spreading.

“Chloe, what’s your status?” Kim’s voice came over the in-ear-mike.

“I’ll be okay. It’s Lucifer. He’s….” She trailed off.

“Should we call an ambo?”

“They couldn’t help him, Kim.”

“Can we lend any other aid?”

What aid could they possibly lend? Human medicine had failed the Devil before. “I don’t think so.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.

This was bad. Lucifer was injured, unconscious, clearly bleeding out. He might die. And this was a supernatural wound; her getting out of range wouldn’t help. In all honesty, she didn’t think she’d be able to walk that far right now, anyway. Barring a miracle, he would die.

Her Devil would die.

She did the first thing that came to her mind. Forcing her hands into the prayer position - her left hand was beginning to lose feeling - she concentrated.

_ Amenadiel! Sachiel! Anyone! Come here quickly, please, and help Lucifer! He’s dying! Please!  _ “Uh, amen, I suppose,” she added out loud, her throat closing up on the last word.

She waited, forcing herself to breathe evenly. Nothing happened. Her arm was  _ really  _ hurting now. She pressed her right hand to it and looked. A seemingly black liquid was oozing steadily from her upper arm between her fingers, where the pain was consolidating into the throbbing ache of deep injury. In better light, she knew she’d see the red for what it was.

Desperate, not knowing what else to do, she put her right hand on Lucifer’s neck to feel for a pulse, inadvertently smearing his pale skin with her blood. He was so still….

There was a shift in the atmosphere and a gust of wind. Chloe looked up.

It probably was just the fact that things were getting increasingly blurry, but it looked to her like she was surrounded by robed figures. Then, Amenadiel blocked her vision. “Chloe.” He smiled. “It’s alright. Let us take care of him.”

She blinked. “Us…?” She looked again, but the robed figures had disappeared. Had they even been really there, or was she beginning to lose it?

“Hello, Chloe,” Sachiel said, moving next to Amenadiel. “You’re injured. Let me help you, please.”

“I’m fine,” Chloe protested. “Or will be. I’ve got one of his feathers.”

Sachiel nodded. “Keep it for another time. We are here now.”

Frustration welled up in her. “I’m fine! Take care of Lucifer!”

“We are,” Sachiel said patiently. “You need to let me take care of you, too. Come on, move aside. Give us room.”

Reluctantly, she let herself be moved away from Lucifer, because it was the rational thing to do, even though her instincts were protesting all the way. “Woah,” she said, assailed by another bout of sudden dizziness.

“Sit down, Chloe”, Sachiel said gently, helping her down to sit on the ground and supporting her against him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Hell-forged blades are nothing to trifle with. Now relax, close your eyes.”

She took a deep breath, trying to stave off the dizziness.

“Raphael,” Amenadiel was saying behind Sachiel. “What do you think?”

“A nasty wound,” a female voice answered in a strange, lilting accent. “Will require more grace than I can expend. Amenadiel, Michael? Your help, please. Hurry.”

Chloe craned her neck, trying to see what was happening.

“Close your eyes, Chloe,” Sachiel repeated. He was holding something between thumb and forefinger that she couldn’t make out in the near-darkness but knew to be one of his feathers.

She followed his instruction, straining her ears instead.

“Hold his head like this,” the woman - Raphael - was saying. Her deep, almost sultry voice sounded calm, professional. “Amenadiel, hold this closed, like so. Now channel your grace here, and you, Mike, here.”

There was a pause. A brilliant light illuminated Chloe’s eyelids, turning everything bright red. It was only then that she felt a touch on her arm, followed by another bright light, though not as bright as the first one.

She knew what a feather healing looked like. Clearly, that was not what Lucifer was receiving.

“How is he?” she said, opening her eyes again as soon as the light was fading. The fact that the pain in her arm had faded as well was merely an afterthought. She’d probably be glad about it later, but right now, she had something more important on her mind. “Will he be okay?”

There was no reply. The cold terror from before flared up again.

She looked at Sachiel. “Please, I need to know.” She heard the desperation in her own voice and did not care.

Sachiel clearly read her correctly, because he helped her up and walk the few steps to the place where three angels were huddling over Lucifer, two dark heads and a blond one blocking her view.

For a minute, she stood there staring, feeling small and helpless in the presence of all these divine beings, just a mortal who had nothing to contribute, no special ability to offer. She felt Sachiel’s hand on her shoulder and was grateful for this show of support at least.

Finally, all three angels relaxed simultaneously, leaning back from where they had knelt. “Alright,” Raphael said softly. “It’s up to him now.”

“How is he?” Chloe asked again, trying to catch a glimpse of Lucifer’s face.

Raphael rose from her kneeling position to face her. “Reckless as always, but surprisingly well-intentioned,” she said. “This was the first time I know of when he actually cleaned up his own mess.”

Chloe opened her mouth and closed it again. “That’s not….” She finally managed to utter.

The small, brown-skinned angel inclined her head to one side, reminding Chloe forcefully of Lucifer despite otherwise looking nothing like him. Like Michael, she was wearing a long, flowing robe. “Our little brother has sustained a nasty wound and lost a lot of blood because of it, but he is stable for now,” she said, throwing a glance at Michael who had chosen that moment to stand next to her. “He’ll be weak and tired for at least… seven Earth days or so, but he should make a complete recovery.”

“Unless he does something else reckless,” Michael put in.

“Like throw an orgy,” Amenadiel added, dusting off his hands and joining his siblings.

“We should really take him to the Silver City where he could recover in comfort,” Raphael resumed, “but I have a feeling he’d rather endure the appalling conditions of Earth and be in your company, Chloe Decker.”

“Besides, Father might disapprove,” Michael said pointedly.

Raphael smiled resignedly. “That, too.” She looked at Chloe. “So, where should we bring him? Where is his home on Earth?”

Chloe forced herself to rally. “Uh, Los Angeles, California. On the West coast, in the South of North America. In a building called Lux.” She nodded at Amenadiel. “He knows where. They do, too,” she added, nodding at Sachiel and Michael. “We’ve had, like, a dinner party there a while ago. We can do that again, actually. You’re invited, Raphael. All of you. Uh, when Lucifer’s better, of course.” She realized she was babbling and shut herself up.

Raphael’s smile widened. “I’ll remember that. Thank you.” She looked at Amenadiel. “You carry Luci. He needs to get out of this cold, or it will all have been for nothing. Sach, bring Chloe, please. Mike, thank you. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Lucifer’s twin nodded. “We’ve had our differences, but I don’t want him dead.” He threw Chloe a look. “Especially not now.”

Before Chloe could respond to that, Raphael clapped her hands once, and the angels sprang to action, and next thing she knew, she found herself standing next to Sachiel in Lucifer’s penthouse.

Amenadiel, who was holding Lucifer cradled against his big body, immediately made for the bedroom, while Raphael looked around.

“This is where he lives? So dark and crammed. Primitive.”

“You should see my apartment, Sister,” Sachiel said dryly.

Raphael shook her head. “I will never understand you. Any of you. To choose this over the Silver City….”

“Lucifer’s the only one who chose this,” Sachiel pointed out. “But it’s really not so bad once you get used to it. Earth has some really beautiful spots.”

Chloe left them to it. She needed to be close to Lucifer now, so she walked up the steps to his bedroom.

Her phone chose that moment to ring.

She accepted the call absently, her attention focused on the motionless form on the bed. “Decker.”

“Chloe!” Kim Taylor’s voice came. “Thank God! Where are you? Are you okay?”

Oh yeah, right. Chloe suppressed a sigh. She so didn’t want to have to deal with this right now, but from NYPD team’s perspective, she and Lucifer had just vanished into thin air, so she supposed that a few words of explanation might be in order.

“I’m fine,” she said, stepping aside to let Raphael pass who also entered Lucifer’s bedroom, “we’re both back in LA.”

“What? How?”

Seeing them, Amenadiel stepped back from the bed, looking deeply unhappy.

“Long story, don’t really have time to explain right now. I’ll send you a copy of my report as soon as it’s finished, okay?” She ended the call, feeling slightly guilty.

The New York cops deserved better. They certainly deserved an explanation from her in person, not just a heavily edited report. Besides, there were loose ends to tie up. Their things were still in their hotel suite, which they hadn’t checked out of, for one thing.

But Lucifer was lying there so pale and still, and she couldn’t really bring herself to care right now.

Raphael was bending over him, peering at his face. Whatever she found there made her sigh. “Chloe,” she said, not looking up, “help me get him out of these dirty and constricting garments, please. And find something that will warm him up. It’s warmer here than in that other place, but it’s still too cold. He needs to be as comfortable as possible.”

Chloe did as she was asked. Lucifer’s shirt was a loss, torn and bloody, and she had little hope for his leather jacket. She half expected him to come to and make one of his off-color remarks as she unbuttoned his jeans to pull them off his long legs, but he didn’t. It was scary, seeing him so still. Lucifer was always so vibrant. He had no business looking so lifeless.

When his body was completely bare, Chloe saw a bright red line snaking its way down his left side, starting near his collarbone and ending just above his hip. She realized that that was where the demon must have got him.

“He was cut open,” Raphael said softly. “It was very close. If you hadn’t called us, he might have been destroyed. I was barely able to save him with the help of two brothers.” She pulled the electric blanket over her brother, tucking it in carefully, lingering near his face. “I wish….” She shook herself.

Then she carefully rolled Lucifer onto his side and stroked her hand down his back once, firmly.

Clearly in response to that touch, his wings appeared, lying limp and flat on the bed. With practiced motions, Raphael folded them on his back, running her fingers through the pinions to keep from getting them caught out of alignment, before settling him and draping the blanket back over him.

She turned to Chloe. “I will be back in a little while to check the wound. I trust you to take care of him.”

Chloe nodded. “I will.”

“Give him water when he asks for it, but see to it that he doesn’t choke. Under no circumstances allow him to try to sit up by himself, let alone leave his bed. He is exhausted. He barely has enough strength left to breathe and keep his heart beating.” She looked back at Lucifer. “Seems like something is draining him even now. He is expending his energy for something.” Gently, she ran her hand over his hair. “Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it, little brother. Conserve your strength.”

Chloe realized what it must be she was be talking about. “He has a glamour,” she said, wondering whether Raphael would know about this, whether she had even seen her brother after the Fall.

“A glamour?” Raphael repeated, peering again at Lucifer and confirming that she hadn’t known.

“He doesn’t really look like this anymore,” Chloe said, doing her best to keep all reproach out of her voice. She didn’t know the full story of what had happened back then, no matter how easy it was to blame Lucifer’s siblings for not defending him against their Father. And besides, Raphael had probably just saved his life.

“It must be important to him if he bothers with a near-permanent glamour to hide his form,” Raphael said. “But his vanity surely is secondary now. See to it that he ceases until he’s better, if you can. Unless whatever he’s hiding is too horrible for you to endure…?”

“It isn’t,” Chloe said firmly, earning herself an approving look from the angel. “Actually, I kinda like it.”

“Really.”

“Hmhm.” She smiled. “Thank you, Raphael, for your help. Thank you so much. I couldn’t….” She took a breath, trying not to dwell on how close it had been. “I meant it with that dinner invitation, you know.”

Raphael rose. “I know. I’ll hold you to it.” She raised her dark eyebrows as if she’d had a sudden thought. “Oh, and speaking of food. Bear with me for a moment.”

Her wings appeared, the feathers white with a beautiful metallic blue sheen that formed a striking contrast to her brown skin, but she disappeared before Chloe could fully appreciate them, leaving her alone with Lucifer.

From the main room, the voices of Amenadiel and Sachiel could be heard, talking softly.

Chloe sat down on the side of the bed, leaning over Lucifer and gently placing her hand on his pale face. “Luce, babe,” she said softly, “you are safe now. You can shift, okay? Shift. It’s draining you. Just let go and relax. You can trust me.” She threaded her fingers into his hair to touch and stroke his scalp the way she had done so often before to encourage him to shift.

He gave a soft sigh. Other than that, he didn’t respond, and his eyes remained closed. Then, with another sigh, he dropped his glamour.

“Yes,” Chloe breathed, rewarding his trust with a gentle brush of her fingertips across his cheeks and forehead. “Rest. Sleep.” She pulled the electric blanket up higher, adjusting its setting, arranging the pillows around the Devil’s scorched-looking, red-skinned head to cocoon him in warmth and softness. “Get better.”

There was a sound of air displacing in the main room, but before Chloe could go on the alert about it, she heard Raphael’s soft voice and Amenadiel replying. Then the small angel came up the steps to the bedroom, carrying a bowl.

“He shouldn’t eat any earthly food for the next seven days,” Raphael explained in response to Chloe’s questioning glance. “His insides are injured too much to deal with waste. This is better.” She held the bowl out to Chloe, who took it.

The fine-spun glass bowl seemed to contain a white powder. “What is it?”

“It’s been called manna by humans. We call it --” and she finished with a word in another language that Chloe didn’t think she’d be able to repeat. “Dissolve it in milk, cow’s milk. It will turn the powder into a paste he can easily swallow.” Her eyes had fallen on Lucifer’s face at the last sentence. “Oh, Luci,” she breathed, her expression turning to one of deep compassion. “I am so sorry.” Her hand rose as if to reach across the distance and touch the scorched face, but she stilled herself.

Chloe sat down on the bed, putting the glass bowl on the bedside table to have her hands free. This was her chance. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Can you tell me if he’s still in pain from the burns? He won’t give me a straight answer.”

Raphael smiled sadly. “No, I can’t tell you that. Pain is a curious thing. It is created in the mind, and the mind’s state isn’t constant. He may feel pain one day, when his mind is at its lowest, and not on another, when he is strong.” She looked at Chloe. “Or when he feels loved.”

Chloe nodded, relieved. She’d hoped as much. She’d hoped that she was able to help him with her touch. “Will it ever heal?” She took a breath. “Could you… heal him?”

Now, Raphael shook her head. “If it still hasn’t healed after all this long time, then it’s not an injury that I have the power to heal. Some damage is permanent, even for us.” She compressed her lips. “Only Father has power over it.”

_ And He will only heal these wounds if and when He forgives Lucifer for his rebellion, _ Chloe silently added.

There was a brief pause, broken by Raphael. “What happened to you two, anyway?”

“You weren’t watching?” Chloe said, trying for some levity.

It fell flat, because Raphael shook her head. “We’re not the ones who are watching. We merely responded when we felt your prayer.”

“I see. Well, we fought a demon.”

“Really? There was no trace of it when we arrived.”

Chloe nodded. “Lucifer made him go up in flames just before he….” She swallowed. “Before he crashed.”

Raphael looked amazed. “He used Lightbringer power? I thought that Father had stripped him of that.”

“I think it’s come back recently.”

“Really.” She shook her head, still with an air of astonishment. “Clearly, Father is reconsidering a lot of past decisions.” Stepping back, she added, “I’m now leaving my little brother in your care, Chloe Decker.”

“Just Chloe, please.”

That earned her a smile. “Chloe. I’ll be back to check on him, but I’ll be on call. You clearly know how it’s done.”

“Thank you. So much.”

The angel nodded, unfolded her wings, and disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go; this one will be pure h/c (which is the whole reason why I've written this story). Sorry for the long wait! I hope you liked this bit. And thank you for all your kudos and comments! <3


	5. Chapter 5

Pale eyelids rose, just far enough to reveal a sliver of softly glowing orange beneath.

Chloe, sitting next to Lucifer on the edge of his bed facing him, had been waiting for this moment. Gently, she ran her thumb across the ridge of his forehead where his left eyebrow would be if he weren’t currently in his devil form. “Hey,” she whispered. “Welcome back, Luce.”

He blinked slowly and managed to open his eyes all the way. The corners of his mouth twitched in what Chloe assumed was a nascent smile.

She leaned over him to kiss his temple. “How are you feeling? Warm enough? Need anything?” She thought that the glow in his eyes was weaker than normal. 

He exhaled on a soft noise in the back of his throat, then silently worked his mouth, his eyelids drooping to half-mast. His lips moved, forming a soundless “you okay?”

She remembered that his last memory would be of the battle against the demon; he’d been unconscious ever since. “I’m fine,” she reassured him, touched that he would think of her first, even now.

He smiled that barely there smile in response.

Her heart ached with how weak he was; barely able to keep his eyes open or to utter the softest sound, and she understood what Raphael had meant when she told her not to risk letting Lucifer choke on water. Right now, he’d be much too weak for coughing and might, at worst, suffocate.

She abandoned her plan of feeding him ice chips for now, instead contenting herself with gently stroking his face until his eyes drifted all the way closed.

“Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

 

* * *

She had requested a week of office work that she then turned into home office work. Lieutenant Monroe had signed off on all that without any discussion after she’d heard Chloe’s brief report on what had happened in New York. She was even thoughtful enough to send Dan with a laptop and some paperwork over to Lucifer’s penthouse so Chloe wouldn’t have to leave her partner’s bedside.

Dan, who had somehow turned into a great guy while she wasn’t looking, regarded the sleeping Lucifer with a soft “aw man” and left her the office work and a promise to take care of Trixie, and then she was alone again with the Devil.

Despite the quiet in the spacious apartment, she hadn’t gotten much work done, though. She’d set up camp right next to Lucifer’s bed just in case he needed anything, so whenever there was the slightest movement or sound from him, she would stop typing mid-thought and mid-word to peer at the blanketed heap, trying to catch every change in his condition and be there for him immediately. Finally, she couldn’t stand being so far away from him, so she abandoned the work thing she couldn’t really focus on anyway and stretched out next to him on the bed, on her side, her head cushioned on her arm, so she could look at his sleeping face and listen to his breathing.

And so, attuned to tiny sounds and movements as she was, she almost jumped out of her skin when Lucifer started to moan.

It was a full-throated, sustained, wretched sound, and it was like a punch to her gut. Chloe immediately put her hand on his currently hairless skull, trying to reach him, to calm him.

He fell silent, but only because he had run out of air; his eyes did not open. Then, he drew a breath and repeated the terrible sound, and again on the next breath, and the next.

Nothing Chloe did, from stroking his face and wings to hugging him or kissing him or talking even singing to him made him stop. Her only consolation was the fact that his eyes remained closed, so she could hope that he was still asleep and didn’t really feel anything, and that this was an unconscious reaction.

Which was when he stopped with the horrible sounds mid-moan, and his eyes opened.

He looked at her out of barely glowing orange eyes, his face contorting into a grimace. His breathing grew shallow and halting, and as he really began to feel the pain, he started to writhe slowly in obvious agony, long limbs moving convulsively and fingers fisting into the bedding, even though he barely had the strength for it. The worst thing was the way he compressed his lips to keep the sounds of pain from escaping and not entirely succeeding.

Chloe found that she preferred the moans of earlier to this silent battle.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I know it hurts. Try not to move, it’ll only hurt worse. Just lie still. Try to lie still.”

He gasped and actually managed to stop his movements but couldn’t quite keep his feet from twitching. His eyes flashed bright red, and he choked down a moan before turning his face into the pillow.

She remembered how strong pain had fanned the hellfire in his eyes before, which told her all she needed to know about how bad it was. But what could she do to help him? He was susceptible to drugs while in her presence, but this was pain caused by a supernatural wound. And besides, could Advil or anything like it even touch this kind of agony? He had been  _ cut open. _

After a minute of frantic searching for alternatives while helplessly watching him suffer, she did the only thing she could think of - put her hands together and pray.

Raphael arrived ten seconds later, took one look at Lucifer, nodded at Chloe, and disappeared again. Lucifer hadn’t even noticed his sister’s presence.

“It’ll pass soon,” Chloe tried to reassure him, stroking his smooth, burned-looking skin.

“I bloody hope so,” he forced out. “I must admit that it’s a tad unpleasant.”

She kissed his forehead, loving him so much for his genteel understatement. “Raphael was here just now. She’ll be right back with something to help you.” At least, that was what Chloe very much hoped would happen.

“Raph?” Lucifer whispered. “How? Why?”

“She was the one that healed you.”

He blinked at her in disbelief, momentarily distracted from his pain, and Chloe remembered Raphael’s words about pain being a thing of the mind.

“I was so scared for you that I prayed to anyone who would listen to come and help you, and there she was,” she explained, hoping to distract him further.

He sighed. “I’ve always liked her,” he whispered.

He sounded so wistful. Chloe had suspected for a while that he missed his siblings underneath all the outward resentment, and here was more proof.

“She’ll be right back,” she repeated, in case he hadn’t heard her the first time. He still looked so out of it.

“Oh,” he breathed. He blinked, and then his scorched-looking skin smoothed and filled as he began to shift back to his human form.

Chloe put her hand on his face, feeling eyebrows begin to brush against her fingertips. “No, no, don’t shift back. Save your strength.”

“I don’t want her to see me like this.” His voice was barely audible.

“Oh Lucifer, she’s already seen you, honey.” She continued to run her hand over his face, hoping to reassure him. “It’s okay. You can trust her. Just don’t… tax yourself over this, okay? You need to save your strength.”

He hesitated, but then, with a sigh, he let go of the barely established glamour. 

“Yes, good,” Chloe breathed, leaning over to brush her lips against his true skin. She could feel him shiver as he fought the pain and his need to move, to escape it.  _ Come on, Raphael, _ she silently implored.

Right on cue, the flutter of wings in the main room heralded the angel’s arrival.

Chloe could feel Lucifer respond to the sound by holding his breath and beginning to turn his face away, but she stopped him by placing a hand on his cheek. “It’ll be okay,” she tried to reassure him.

“Brother,” Raphael said softly, coming up the steps. “It’s me.” She halted near the doorway. “Am I welcome in your home?”

Lucifer gasped, and Chloe could tell that the pain was back for him with a vengeance. “Yes, yes,” he ground out. “I take it you were in here before, anyway, so….” His voice was weak and thready, barely audible.

“Shh, don’t talk,” Chloe said before looking up at Raphael. “Please, help him.”

Raphael stepped closer and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Chloe. “Luci,” she said, “please turn to face me. I’m going to put something on your face for you to breathe in, and it won’t really work if you hide from me like this.”

“Uh,” Chloe interjected, not liking the way Lucifer was tensing up at his sister’s words, “maybe I could do that for you?”

Raphael nodded with a slight smile. “Of course. Thank you, Chloe.”

Chloe took the object the angel handed to her, examining it curiously. It looked like a face mask that was supposed to cover nose and mouth, but unlike with human surgical respirators, its inside was lined with a thick fluffy substance.

Raphael held out a clear flask to her. “Put two drops of this onto the down and hold it on Luci’s face for one breath, to start with. We’ll give him more if that’s not enough.”

She did as instructed, realizing as she did so that the fluffy substance inside the mask really was down feathers. Angel down? If so, she wondered whose they were, and whether Lucifer would recognize them from their smell.

If he did recognize the down donor, he didn’t show it. When Chloe placed the mask over his face, he merely inhaled gratefully, eyes closed.

“That’s enough for now,” Raphael said from behind Chloe when Lucifer started to exhale. “Let’s wait for it to take effect.”

Chloe removed the mask and watched him, her free hand on the back of his head, stroking him gently, soothingly, waiting for him to relax. His eyes were still closed, and she couldn’t read his devil face well enough to be able to tell how he was feeling except that he was very tense.

“Better?” she finally asked him when the tension didn’t seem to be easing.

He sighed, and it was almost a groan. “Barely,” he admitted.

“It should have kicked in by now,” Raphael said, sounding like she was forcing herself to calm. “Give him two breaths, Chloe.”

She did. When she removed the mask this time, Lucifer’s hand twitched in an aborted attempt to hold it in place, and her gut contracted at the thought of how bad the pain must still be if he craved the stuff he was inhaling that much.

They waited, listening to Lucifer’s halting breaths, waiting for them to even out. Chloe kept up her gentle stroking. Touching him like this seemed to be helping, and it made her feel better as well.

“This isn’t working,” Raphael finally said, keeping her voice low, “but it should. I need to have a look at the wound. Give him three more drops and five breaths, Chloe, please.”

This time, there was a response. Lucifer’s tense form visibly relaxed after he had inhaled the mystery substance for the third time. Chloe kept the mask in place for two more breaths when Raphael nodded at her, and when she removed it, he was obviously unconscious.

Chloe was surprised at her relief at the knowledge that, this way, he didn’t feel the pain anymore; for a while at least.

“I wanted to avoid this,” Raphael said, coming closer at last and sitting down on the edge of the bed next to Chloe. “It would have been better to have his input while I examine him, but if he’s in so much pain, I would just be torturing him. Please, help me turn him onto his back.”

It took a bit of doing, what with Lucifer’s limp wings getting in the way, but they managed. To Raphael’s credit, she didn’t acknowledge his burnt-looking appearance once, not even when he was lying before her with his midriff exposed so she could check the wound. She merely peered closely at the red line, gently palpated its edges, and opened her shoulder bag to take out another glass bottle.

Chloe watched, anxious and feeling out of her depth.

Raphael looked at her consideringly, then handed her the bottle. “Put some of this on the wound, on its entire length, using one fingertip. Be quick about it. Wash your hand immediately afterwards. Keep the bottle, and do it again whenever the pain comes back.”

“Okay.” Gratefully, Chloe took the bottle from the angel and focused on her task.

The wound was red, slightly elevated, seeping a clear liquid in a couple of places. The skin near it looked swollen. “Is it healing okay?” Chloe asked. “It looks inflamed.”

“It is, but that’s to be expected. The blade was hardly sterile. This gel should take care of it. I did my best, but even angelic healing has its limits, and the worst damage lies deeper.”

“I didn’t mean to offend,” Chloe hastened to reassure her. “I’m sure you did better than anyone else could have done. I’m just worried.”

Raphael smiled. “I know you are. It is clear to everyone who looks at you that you love him very much. I’m… glad. It’s good to know that he has you.”

By then, Chloe was finished smoothing the thick, clear gel onto the wound, so she got up to follow instructions and wash her hand. As she did so, she wondered what would happen to her if she just left her finger covered with the gel ; what would happen if she put this stuff on a human.

When she came back to the bedroom, Raphael was still sitting next to Lucifer and holding the face mask to his face again.

“I’m waking him up,” she explained. “The wound shouldn’t be hurting him anymore, not for a while, at least, and it’s better for him if he sleeps naturally.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said, “again. I’m eternally in your debt.” Knowing Lucifer and his approach to debts, and the fact that immortality for herself was in play, she was well aware that her words held literal meaning.

“There is no debt,” Raphael said, surprising Chloe. “Father created me for this exact task - to help those who need my help. It’s my function. Your superiors at your profession aren’t in your debt for the job you do, either, no?” She saw Chloe’s face and smiled again. “Luci has elevated the concept of debt and favor into an art form, but he’s the only one. The rest of us just do what we’re told to do.”

By then, Lucifer was blinking, his Devil face crunching up as he struggled for wakefulness. Chloe thought that she’d never seen anything more adorable, with the possible exception of the face Trixie made when she sneezed.

Raphael nodded to herself and rose to her feet. “I’ll be back again to check the wound. Do get some rest yourself, Chloe. You’ll be of no use to him if you fall asleep when you can’t afford to.”

“Right.” She watched the angel unfold her wings and disappear in a gust of wind.

 

* * *

Lucifer had gone right back to sleep, and Chloe, deciding that it would be a good idea to use this time to heed Raphael’s advice, had stretched out on the bed next to him. It had taken her all of ten seconds to fall asleep.

When she woke up again, drawn out of slumber by that mothering instinct that responded to the slightest disturbance she had developed when Trixie had been a newborn, she found that Lucifer had somehow pulled one of his wings out from under the electric blanket and up over his head, effectively hiding underneath it.

She could hear him breathe beneath his feathery shelter. His breaths sounded regular; maybe a little fast, but fortunately there were none of those horrible pain sounds from before.

Was he okay? She didn’t want to disturb him if he was. Maybe he just needed to hide away for a bit. Maybe exposing his true form to his sister had unsettled him, and now he needed whatever solitude he could get to regroup.

Still, she needed to let him know that it was okay, that she was okay with him shutting her out temporarily, so she gently put her hand onto his wing, stroking along the sinewy wing arm gently, once, twice, and then she removed her hand.

He sighed, so softly that she almost didn’t hear it.

“Lucifer?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

He hummed in response, moving his folded wing away from his face to let it rest on his shoulder. He was still in his Devil form; the softly glowing white of his feathers forming a stark contrast against the dark red of his skin. His eyes opened, revealing their orange glow, but it still seemed muted.

Chloe forced her brain to wake up fully. He was awake. He might need her. “Are you thirsty? Hungry? Warm enough?”

He blinked slowly, and remained silent for so long that Chloe feared he hadn’t understood her. “Got any single malt?” he finally asked, voice rough.

She couldn’t suppress her smile. He must be feeling better if he could quip like that. “I’ve got ice chips,” she said, putting her hand back on his wing because it had felt so soft and warm, and she needed to feel it again.

“Boring,” he replied, his feathers puffing up in response to her touch, and smoothing down again slowly.

“All you’re getting, mister,” she said, keeping up her stroking, watching the feathers quiver.

“So bossy,” he said with a sigh that lacked his usual sassiness, but Chloe was still glad.

She fed him ice chips, slowly, one after another, with long pauses in between to give him time to swallow properly, until he’d consumed about a glass of water worth of ice, about an hour later.

Exhausted, he went back to sleep, and she held him for a while, caressing him, listening to his breaths, fearing the return of those horrible pain sounds with each exhalation, until sleep claimed her, too.

 

* * *

When Lucifer woke up again, Chloe had finally finished her report and a call to the NY cops to debrief them. “Give the Devil our regards,” Kim had told her. “It was a pleasure working with him. Not that I’d thought I’d ever say something like that.”

_ Welcome to the club, _ Chloe had thought, remembering her own feelings of disbelief back when she’d still been new to all this.

Now, though, she was feeding the actual Devil manna from Heaven, which was a slow and laborious process that allowed no moments of disbelief.

She knew she needed some milk to dissolve the manna in, which had presented a small stumbling block. Lucifer’s fridge held all sorts of wonders, but milk was not among them, so she’d recruited Ella (who’d been very enthusiastic and cooperative and only asked for a small sample of manna for analysis in return) to go buy a reasonable quantity of milk.

Cow’s milk, full fat, unprocessed, just to be certain. Manna was prehistoric, and any milk available back then would certainly not have been homogenized or pasteurized or defatted or almond or soy milk or whatever milk derivatives and alternatives humanity had come up with since then. Ella had agreed, and now Lucifer’s fridge had acquired a new addition, direct from an organic farmer.

Chloe had warmed a cup of that milk to room temperature - which, since this was the Devil’s abode, was toasty warm - and put enough manna in it for it to become doughy. Curious, she had tasted it, and the resulting taste explosion had tempted her to eat the whole thing herself, but she’d resisted. Barely.

She’d ignored Lucifer’s soft comments about lack of condiments and disgusting texture, suspecting that he was smoke screening so she wouldn’t realize how much the taste reminded him of home, and how touched he was to be tasting it again after all this time. He was the Devil, and he had his pride, even and especially when he was too weak to hold the spoon by himself and needed almost five minutes to swallow down each single spoonful.

Which was why she purposely didn’t mention that she had seen his eyes fill at one point.

 

* * *

An hour later, the pain was back, but this time, Chloe was prepared.

She carefully smoothed the angelic gel onto the length of the wound, watching Lucifer’s face relax more and more as the pain eased, and only the need to go and wash her hand kept her from holding him as he went back to sleep almost immediately afterwards.

She made up for it though, stroking his face and head as he slept, listening to his soft humming. At one point, thinking the sounds sounded somehow like a question, she impulsively hummed back at him, which surprisingly made him fall silent for a while. When he started again, she repeated the sound immediately. He stopped. She kept humming, and he stayed silent.

Then it clicked. He needed to hear sounds, music, to feel reassured that he was among friends. That he wasn’t in Hell, where there was no music.

So she softly sang to him for a while, and when she ran out of energy, she scrolled through his playlists.

_ “Sex music”, nah. “Orgy music”, double nah. “Stuff”. Huh. _ She opened that one to find a compilation of titles and artists she mostly didn’t recognize, but the ones she did were slow, contemplative, almost meditative pieces. The Devil maintaining a playlist for relaxing music and naming it “stuff” was so typical, and just what she needed right now.

The first song that came on (the playlist was on “shuffle”) was the Adagio in G minor by Albinoni.

She swore she could see Lucifer relax even more to the slow, sad music.

 

* * *

 

She found the loose down feather underneath the electric blanket the morning after that.

It looked dull, lacking the familiar divine glow of Lucifer’s feathers. And it wasn’t the only one. Once she’d started looking, she found three more, all small down feathers, all dull.

“They’re spent,” Raphael said during her next visit to check the wound. “He’s using his divinity to heal himself, and once their grace is gone, his feathers will come loose.”

“So, he’s not molting,” Chloe said, making sure. It had been on her mind, together with Lucifer’s words a while ago that ‘angels aren’t chickens’.

That had actually made the Raphael laugh. “No, we don’t molt. Our feathers are much too powerful to just fall out. Humanity would have turned them into relics long before now if that was the case.”

“Right,” Chloe said, watching Raphael check Lucifer’s wound. Then a thought came to her. “Wait. He gave me a feather, said it had come out while he groomed his wings. That one did glow.” She’d since used it for healing and had been gifted a new one promptly. That one glowed, too.

Raphael frowned. “Our feathers don’t just ‘come out’. He’d have to have pulled it out deliberately, to give it to you. Like I said, they are too powerful. Only angels that have fallen will have a condition that is similar to molting, and their feathers will be without divinity after that.”

Chloe took a moment to digest that. “So, when he was cast out, did he lose his feathers?”

Raphael paused in the act of putting another gel onto the wound, which was looking better to Chloe’s untrained eye. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding sad. “And I feel bad that I don’t know. But it was so long ago. We were, all of us, so young back then. Many of us were scared, and shocked, when it happened. We had never seen Father get angry like that.”

She looked at Lucifer, who was thankfully deeply asleep, or she probably wouldn’t have talked so freely. Her hand carefully reached out and brushed across his burned face. “This is terrible. He was Father’s most beautiful son. To see him like this….”

“I think he’s come to terms with it,” Chloe offered. “He uses his appearance to punish humans. That’s his job, right? And the rest of the time, he has his glamour, which is pretty awesome.”

“Indeed.” Her job done, the angel pulled the electric blanket back over her brother, brushing the backs of her fingers against the side of his neck. To check his temperature? Chloe wondered.

Then Raphael gave her a searching look. “You look tired, Chloe. If you have enough manna left, you should have some yourself. It’ll sustain you until this is over. I’ll bring more if necessary.”

 

* * *

On the third day, Trixie refused to be kept away from her unofficial step Devil any longer, and so, after a barrage of texts and phone calls, Chloe had relented, on the proviso that there would be no strain put on the recovering demon slayer. Lucifer had demanded a prior definition of ‘strain’, but Chloe had been able to tell that, underneath all that, he was really pleased to see Trixie.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, Chloe’s little monkey fully respected Lucifer’s need for quiet. She calmly settled on the rug next to his bed, opened her backpack, and pulled out a book with a collection of short stories, which she then started to read to him. “Mommy always reads me stories when I’m sick,” she’d explained. “It makes me feel better.”

And if Lucifer had dropped off halfway during the first story with a soft smile on his face, Chloe wouldn’t tell anyone.

An hour after Trixie had been collected by Dan, Ella showed up with flowers, chocolates, a bottle of single malt whisky, and a get well soon card signed by everyone at the department. “It’s the most expensive stuff we could find,” she said. “We’ve pooled. Everyone contributed, even the cleaning staff.”

It had taken a bit of negotiating to keep Lucifer from trying the whisky then and there.

Amenadiel was next. He stood next to Lucifer’s bed for a few minutes looking down at his brother, silent and brooding, then nodded at Chloe with a smile and sat down on the chair at the foot of the bed. “I can take over for a while if you need to go stretch your legs,” he offered sotto voce.

She smiled, surprised. “You sure?”

He nodded. “It’s no hardship. I’ve taken care of my little brother before.”

Her expression must have shown her curiosity, because he added, “He’s always been reckless. When we were very young, he injured himself often. Raphael got her training mostly on him.”

Chloe peered at Lucifer, who was lying motionless, face half buried in the pillow, obviously asleep. “What was he like?” she asked softly, now really curious. “Besides reckless?”

Amenadiel thought for a bit. “Passionate,” he finally said. “Passionate about everything he did, whether it was brawling, or music, or light, or flying. Incandescent. Curious. Hard to contain. Wild and undisciplined. At the same time, eager to please.” He smiled fondly. “He actually hasn’t changed much.”

She sighed. “He must have been a handful.” It wasn’t hard to imagine Lucifer as a small boy, with huge dark eyes, untamed black curls, and fluffy white wings. Samael, she remembered. That was his name back then. “And cute.”

“‘M not cute,” came the Devil’s nearly unintelligible protest.

“Of course not, my Lord,” Chloe said, smiling, perjuring herself, while Amenadiel said, “No, Luci, you’re mostly annoying.”

A wing was pulled up, covering Lucifer’s barely visible head. “If you’re going to be like that, you can get right out of my bedroom, Brother,” he sulked from underneath his feathery cover.

“Yeah,” Amenadiel drawled, “in a little while.” He looked a Chloe. “Go and take care of yourself for a change. Take a walk. Get some fresh air. I’ll entertain the Lightbringer.”

Spacious as it was, getting out of the penthouse for a few hours actually sounded nice. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

When Chloe came back after an hour and a half, refreshed and ready for more Devil-sitting, she found that the penthouse had been taken over by angels.

Three angels, to be precise, not counting the fallen one. Apparently, Raphael had come for another visit while Amenadiel was watching over Lucifer, and Sachiel had somehow learned about the gathering and joined.

Lucifer was now installed on his settee, covered by the blanket and cushioned by his siblings’ wings. The TV was on; Chloe recognized the soundtrack of one of the Bodybags movies.

“Why are they fighting now?” Sachiel was asking.

“Human misjudgement,” Amenadiel put in.

“Honestly, haven’t you been paying attention?” Lucifer groused. Chloe was glad to hear that his voice was sounding stronger. “ _ That’s _ the guy who laid hands on his gun. Big insult. Also, not a euphemism.”

Raphael was staring intensely at the screen. “If this is a recorded theater play, how did this human survive that? An exploding carriage  _ and _ being thrown through the air for that distance should have killed him.”

“Special effects, Sister,” Lucifer said.

“Uhuh,” Amenadiel added. “There’s an entire human industry behind it.”

“They’re not really anywhere near that pyramid, either,” Sachiel put in. “It’s called green scene.”

“Green  _ screen,”  _ Lucifer corrected.

“Green screen,” Sachiel repeated. “It’s not real. Apparently, computers make it.”

“Really? Fascinating.” Raphael continued to stare. “What are computers?”

Amenadiel waved his bottle. “They’re like an abacus, only much more complex.”

“And faster,” Sachiel added.

“Will you lot shut up and pay attention,” Lucifer said. “This bit is important for later.”

Smiling, Chloe sat down on one of the bar stools. Watching the Celestials watch a movie was more entertaining than watching the movie itself.

 

* * *

Before he left, Amenadiel had carried his injured brother back to his bed, calmly overriding any protest by said brother about not being a baby. And since they clearly were model guests, Sachiel and Raphael had meanwhile cleared up the residue from their impromptu movie night, leaving everything spic and span, all the empties in their designated basket, and even the surfaces wiped down.

“I don’t think he’ll be needing me anymore,” Raphael said. “The wound is healing nicely; now all he has to do is get his strength back. See to it that he doesn’t overtax himself, now that he’s feeling better. I’ve left more manna if he wants it, but it’s okay for him to eat human food now.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said. “And speaking of human food, I still owe you dinner.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Raphael nodded at her, spread her wings, and was gone.

 

* * *

For once, Lucifer slept through the night. So did Chloe, who hadn’t realized how tired she was until she woke up the next morning feeling like a new woman.

Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on who you asked -, Lucifer was feeling exponentially better as well. He had lost several more feathers and would need a thorough grooming, none which prevented him from trying to get out of bed because he was feeling “icky” and required a shower.

Seemed like Chloe’s Devil wrangling skills would really be needed from now on.

In the end, she threatened to chain him to his bed (“Ooh, risqué, my Consort”), and he evidently knew her well enough by now to realize that she meant it.

 

* * *

When the seven days were finally over and Lucifer officially released from bed rest, Chloe felt like celebrating. They had defeated a demon, saved countless human lives, and she personally had survived caring for the Devil.

“I’ll nurse you through your human ailments,” Lucifer promised mock seriously, “so you can see for yourself how stressful it can be to be forced to do nothing.”

She returned his stare. “Oh yeah, you poor Devil, you.”

He kept his stern expression for a second, then dropped it. “That’s funny.”

“I know.”

He mantled his wings around her. “Thank you, Chloe. For everything. Your patience with me is truly divine.”

She put her arms around his neck, wishing she had wings to hug him back. “You’re worth it.”

“Really.”

“Hmhm. I’ll always take care of you, too. But next time, please try not to get hurt. I much prefer you in one piece.”

“I promise I’ll try.”

Which, she supposed, was the best she could hope for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes this part of the series; I hope you liked this last bit. Thanks again for all your kudos and lovely comments on the preceding chapters; I feel terrible that I'm not responding to every comment.
> 
> This series will continue, so keep your eyes open for further instalments.


End file.
